But surprisingly, the site appears to be legitimate. The program almost certainly isn't a dodgy pyramid scheme; it's a new form of online marketing supported by companies like eBay, AOL and Columbia House."

i've been saying this for a while now that it IS a legit service. but of course, people are going to be skeptical that you actually get an iPod for absolutly NO MONEY, but it is certainly not a scam, its a legit way for businesses to pay YOU for advertising for them.

there are many variations, the most popular being Freeipods, freeLCDs (or something to that nature) and Google AdSence (where you are actually paid CASH for advertising)

well, skepticism aside, i just dove in. i'm sure i can find 5 people to sign up for things that can be cancelled anyway. signed myself up for 50 days of aol for free, which i know is safe and easy to cancel, as i've used that before.
can't hurt me, other than the 4 minutes i just spent doing it, and i know that the offer i signed up for is legit. if i don't get an ipod, oh well. if i do, it was worth the 4 minutes : )

well, skepticism aside, i just dove in. i'm sure i can find 5 people to sign up for things that can be cancelled anyway. signed myself up for 50 days of aol for free, which i know is safe and easy to cancel, as i've used that before.
can't hurt me, other than the 4 minutes i just spent doing it, and i know that the offer i signed up for is legit. if i don't get an ipod, oh well. if i do, it was worth the 4 minutes : )

I signed up awhile back, and got my 5 referrals. Quite a few forums have gone crazy the past few days because some Gratis-ordered iPods have begun shipping from eCost. And by some, I mean in batches of 100s. I saw one order for $28k worth of 20GB 4Gs. According to the UPS tracking numbers the first few waves should arrive in users hands tomorrow. I'm still waiting for mine to ship, so we'll see.

I'm still skeptical, but between eCost confirming shipment and the Wired story, this thing is actually looking like it might happen...

Instead, they explained, Gratis Internet is paid a bounty for sending potential customers to sites like AOL, eBay or RealNetworks.

Click to expand...

Which would mean sites like AOL, eBay or RealNetworks are paying $50 for leads to customers that may not spend any money anyways.

I don't know many business that will pay $50 each for deadbeat leads, it's cheaper to build your own free iPod program and give away 5 of them in a internet contest.

Those leads will allow the company to get around any spam and do-not-call list and harass the customers all they want.

Somehow the economics of the program don't quite work out.

Would you rather pay $5000 for 100 leads or pay the same amount into a run a give-a-away and collect 10,000 leads for the same amount of money.

Plus these deadbeats from your contest are worth money, because you can charge other companies money to use your phone room operation to sell their crap. You cannot sell the list (you need personal contact between customer and company), but you can sell crap for other people.

Plus with the millions of sign-ups -- it's now doubtful that people will collect iPods much longer. $50 per deadbeat isn't a wise move.

Now if you ramp the contest up a notch -- giving away 5,000 iPods to collect millions of leads that you can sell is a wise move if you are a scumbag company who wants to run a spam/telemarketing operation.

Extremely cheap way to get around all the federal rules, and highly doubtful the free iPods will really continue much longer.

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So as a legit operation it won't work, factor in a scumbag end-run around federal spam/telemarketing rules -- and it does.

But seriously, if you have money to buy a Mac, you probably have money to buy an iPod. I have enough snail junk mail as it, I don't need a zillion companies to have my personal info so they can nuke and spam my mail box with more crap, just so I have a very very very marginal chance of winning a free iPod, IF the people I sent the junk link to is stupid enough to put in their own personal info and forward the junk link to more idiots who are willing to put in their own personal info so some ass they don't even know can get a free iPod. But then again, this is America, where people actually voted for an idiot as the President, so anything can happen.

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